National affairs editor of The Age

Sunset, when the Gallipoli Peninsula is quiet and the tour buses have gone, grants a softness to the tough hills and the deep valleys of the old Anzac battlefields.

The purple-blooming Joshua tree in Shrapnel Valley Cemetery gives the impression of spreading comforting arms above the silent gravestones. Birds twitter in the heavy scrub that cloaks the valley now where men once lived like rabbits in holes dug into the walls and scurried for shelter from shrapnel that rained upon them.

A single fishing boat sits peacefully off Gaba Tepe, a couple of kilometres south along the beaches, where a big artillery piece once sat in an olive grove and blew hell towards Anzac Cove. Beachy Bill, the Anzacs called the gun, as if the breezy name could strip the terror from it, for its shells dealt death to men who had come down from the hills for the small pleasure of a naked swim in the cove to rid their bodies of the torment of lice.

All these years later, 99 of them, the lovely calm of dusk masks the coming whirl that is Anzac Day.

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A sign sits by the side of the road ready to inform the thousands of Australians and New Zealanders heading for Gallipoli that modern officialdom does not tolerate the larrikinism that once personified the young Anzacs who fought and lost here.

''Mind your personal belongings,'' the sign instructs. ''Have warm and waterproof clothing. Remember your bus number. Follow instructions by officials.'' Sterner advice follows: ''Do not litter. Do not lie on headstones. Do not swim. Do not light any fires. No smoking inside commemorative areas. No drugs or alcohol are allowed.'' The bureaucracy has captured Anzac Day on the peninsula as the annual pilgrimage has grown. Only 10 years ago thousands of young travellers warded off the chill before the dawn service with wine and song and later lay among the gravestones of Lone Pine as if taking possession of the dead who were their own age when they fought and died. Many swam at the cove in a sort of communion with those who had done it in 1915.

Now the commemorative area at North Beach has tiered seating and the area is being fenced off, and authorities will search those attending for any sniff of alcohol, right where the original Anzacs buried bottles of rum in the hope of a quiet moment to drink it. Lone Pine cemetery, too, is being decked out with authorised seating areas, and there will be no swimming at the cove below or swigging through the night or lying on headstones.

Next year, the 100th anniversary of the 1915 landing, the authorities will limit the number of those who wish to attend to 10,200 who have won a ballot. No one seems quite sure how the policing will work.